“Both Rachmaninoff and Liszt had legendarily large mitts. … Meanwhile, shorter digits haven’t impeded the success of other pianists, such as Daniel Barenboim (who can only reach a ninth on the keyboard), and Wael Farouk, who was born with unusually short ligaments and fingers.” includes video)
Tag: 03.07.16
The Naked Pharoah: Countertenor Buffs Up And Bares It All
Anthony Roth Costanzo recounts how – from diets to workouts to (ouch!) full waxing – he prepared for the new production of Philip Glass’s Akhnaten at English National Opera. (includes video and audio)
The Enormous Moving Panoramas Of 19th-Century America
“[A panorama] wasn’t meant to be viewed all at once. As a sort of pre-cinema film strip, it would be slowly turned for an audience as it immersed itself in the nautical narrative. Despite the huge popularity of such moving panoramas in the 19th century, very few survive. One of these rare examples is having a special viewing this month.”
On Whose Authority? Finding A Critical Voice
“Is it possible to write criticism—or even to write critically—while at the same time refusing the critic’s authority? Can a work be coherent, meaningful, and precise without its author dressing it as a piece of art criticism—or as an interview, a short story, a book of photos, a psychoanalytic case study, an autobiography?”
Watching A Violinist’s Brain At Work
“Laying motionless on her back in the MRI machine while her brain activity was being measured, [Jennifer] Koh was asked to imagine playing a series of classical works for solo violin by Paganini and Bach, to listen to them, or to read their musical scores. [Dr.] Overath then studied how Koh’s brain reacted to each.”
The Internet Of The Dead
“When websites such as the Wayback Machine archive websites for posterity and social media accounts linger on after our deaths, a new digital afterlife has been created, one that we can’t necessarily control.”
Anxiety And El Greco: Garth Greenwell On How He Finished ‘What Belongs To You’
“I wasn’t sure I could make it better, and as we inched our way forward I felt I was losing my ability to make my own judgments, or my ability to see the manuscript at all. As I worked through each page I laid it face down, using the overleaf for rewrites, adding scraps and post-its as necessary.”
When Hollywood Was New, Women Ruled
“In fact, there were more women working in Hollywood in its first two decades than there are now, or have been at any time since. If Hollywood is ever to achieve gender parity in its studios and boardrooms, it should look back to its beginnings.”
MTV (!) Salutes Nikolaus Harnoncourt, ‘Classical Music’s Punk Genius’
“‘This brave hero who had the courage to scale back vibrato’ is a weird thing to think, much less type. But in the context of 1950s classical music, historically informed practice landed like a pink wig and a Sex Pistols t-shirt. … No kidding – this stuff is still controversial today.”
Director Of The Hermitage Wants To Rebuild Palmyra
“Mikhail Piotrovsky, the director of the State Hermitage Museum [in St. Petersburg], says that … his museum can help to rebuild the ancient city. … The Hermitage is working with its peers – informally, for now – to gather photographs, engravings and other archival documents that capture the ancient city from every possible angle.”